The present disclosure relates to refresh rate switching, and more specifically, to a processor and an electronic device having the capability of dynamically switching a refresh rate of a display panel according to usage scenario, operation, and/or status of the processor and the electronic device.
A display device is periodically refreshed with images to be presented. In a typical display device, a driving device, such as display driver integrated chip (DDIC), receives image data of images to be presented from a graphic processor unit (GPU) or a display-related circuit that hosts the display device, and according to received image data, a timing controller in the driving device directs one or more source drivers and one or more gate drivers in the driving device to apply proper voltages to pixels of a display panel in the display device, thereby presenting the images. A rate at which the images change from one to another, or are refreshed, on the display panel is called refresh rate. This is normally identical to the rate at which the GPU or the display-related circuit updates a buffer circuit in the driving device.
Nowadays, the display device can be operated at high refresh rates, such as, 120 Hz, 240 Hz, or even higher, which is significantly higher than the refresh rate of 60 Hz on a traditional display device. High refresh rate can smooth out fast-moving contents, such as action movies or sporting events, on the display device, which leads to less motion blur and therefore great user's visual experience. However, high refresh rate also means high power consumption.
Sometimes, the display device may be incorporated in a compact and portable embedded computer system, such as smartphone, tablet, laptop, electronic book, and multimedia player. In such devices, electrical power is limited and exhaustible as provided by a battery, and the display device may consume a significant portion of the limited battery power. The high refresh rate of the display device makes the compact/portable electronic device struggle with the battery power since operations of the GPU or the display-related circuit updating the buffer circuit as well as the driving circuit driving the display panel drains lot of power from the battery. The higher the refresh rate, the more power the electronic device consumes.
Therefore, there is a need for providing a solution that can dynamically switch the refresh rate of the display device to meet different design requirement such as minimizing power consumption and/or to enhancing user's visual experience.